Section 8 - Horizontal Stabilizer (riveting skins to front/rear spars, ribs, & stringers)

A few days have passed, but on-and-off during that time I made 4 cradles to hold the horizontal stabilizer, using plywood scavenged from the top of the empennage crate as well a few feet of 1" angle aluminum I bought from Van's last month "just in case I needed it."  Then I riveted the remaining 3 nose ribs per side. The two inner nose ribs per side, which required bucking at the very forward of the skins, required quite a long monkey-arm to reach, as well as riveting in spurts by Braille (and visually checking, of course). Then, I found that the opposite side required learning how to rivet left-handed (i.e., gun in left, bucking bar in right). Surprisingly, not a lot of swearing, since I anticipated those ribs would be pains in the butt. Part of the reason I could rivet them at all is because of the tungsten bucking bar I got from Cleaveland Tool, which has a very high density; it's shit-ton expensive, but WELL worth the price paid. All surfaces can be used to buck rivets, which helps get it into some tight spots.

The most gratifying part of this section of the build was dropping the skeleton (front spar assembly, ribs, stringers) into the skins and clecoing the whole mess together, because NOW it looks very close to the final product:

... and I don't have to uncleco before riveting. On Saturday, I started riveting the skins to the front spar, which still requires a good reach, but is nowhere near as bad as riveting those inner nose ribs:

I needed a 12" #30 drill bit (to final drill holes) and an double-offset universal rivet set to rivet the AD470-4-7 and AD470-4-8 rivets (5 per side) that join the front spar to the inner-most inspar ribs and nose ribs:

After riveting the skins to the rear spar with the pneumatic squeezer, voila! A competed horizontal stabilizer:

A view of the center portion of the front spar, stringers/web, and rear spar:

Right part of horizontal stabilizer:

Left part of horizontal stabilizer:

looking through the rear spar to view front spar and an inspar rib:

H.S. is now on the shelf with the vertical stabilizer and rudder; together, these parts comprise most of the tail fins.  3 parts completed, many, many more to go...